School Valentine's Day Parties

Thursday Dylan had his Valentine's day party at preschool. Parents didn't attend, but he had a fun time. He loved exchanging VDay cards. After we picked up Blake from school, we went to Beckett's house to decorate Vday cookies. There were some other friends from the neighborhood there. It was fun, but we stayed longer then I was hoping so we weren't able to attend the Art Show for our school district. Blake came home with an invitation for this art show a week ago that was going to be held at the school district office. I assumed everyone had a piece of art there because that's how things are these days...no one gets left out right? Well, when we went to Blake's school party on Friday, I was helping out another table and his friend at the other table said that he saw Blake's piece of art. So I started asking the kids at the other table all these questions about this art show....um, there were 3 kids from his class who had their art work displayed. Um...my bad. 

But we did go to his party...that's more fun anyway right? They did a fun project. They had foam letters on a canvas, then finger painted around the letters, then take off the letters and you have the word... LOVE. It actually turned out really well. Probably should take a picture of Blake's.


But Dylan wanted to take some pictures and took a picture of Lauren, a classmate at the same table as Blake.

They also got to open their Vday cards. Blake really wanted to open them up with Dylan and it made Dylan's day.

As we were walking into Blake's school Dylan said, "Soon I get to be at Blake's school." Poor kid with a late birthday...he really wants to be at school with Blake.

Superman Friends

Last Monday I went to register Dylan for preschool at 7am. The school that I wanted to go to is not huge and everyone loves this school, so people are freaks about registering and sleep in their car the night before so they can be the first in line.  I wasn't going to do that. I figured if we didn't get in, then we had plenty of other options. Aaron took Blake to school that day so that I could register Dylan. My friend Cambria was there, so we waited it out together. But both Beckett and Dylan got in. It is a Methodist preschool...pretty sure I went to a Methodist preschool when I was little. One of my favorite parts though is that it is 1.9 miles from my house. That may seem not super close, but it currently takes me 15 minutes to get to Dylan's preschool, which is about 6 miles away. I timed how long it takes us to get to the new preschool and I just missed the 1 stop light that is on the way and it took 4 minutes and 51 seconds. The preschool itself is also rated really high online and from friends within the community. I think the staff are great. We will see how much Dylan likes it once he starts because he really likes his current preschool, but I think this one will be better for him.

Tuesday was a beautiful day so Beckett and his sister Kelsey came and played at out house and then we went to the park. Wouldn't you know it...both the boys had their Superman shirts on.

They were plotting how to get the bad guys (which of course were us moms).

Energy

Aaron came back from his trip with a bunch of PwC stuff. One of which was a pedometer. Aaron tracks his steps everyday with his watch and we ask him a lot how many steps he has, so when he brought home one that they could use, they were excited to try and get their 10,000 steps for the day. They ran around in circles trying to get their steps.


And would periodically look at the pedometer to see how many steps they had.


But of course they still had more energy and it was a nice weekend, so we went on a walk and Blake wanted to ride the tricycle. He had fun going down the hill by the pond by our house.

One of Blake's homework assignments was to make a box for his valentine's day party for all the cards.  Moms spent hours on these boxes although some of them I will admit were very creative and cute, but way more work then I would every put into. I am all about easy. We try to participate in all the Home depot projects and this one we weren't going to miss because we were going to make a box for Valentine's day. It was perfect. We went and made the box and Blake loved his box. It ended up being a little too small for all his goodies, but still fun.  After the project, Blake and Dylan wrote out their Valentines for their parties. Then we ate lunch and went over to our friends' house to play. They have a big dog...didn't even smell us or lick us, but Blake freaked out. Dylan on the other hand wanted to pet the dog. Aside from the dog, we all had fun. Speaking with playing with friends, I wanted to note Blake's recess progress. In the beginning of the year he was kind of freaked out with kindergarten and with recess. He would just sit on the playground. I talked to all his friends and told them to go try to get Blake to play with them and they did. Soon Blake would play for a couple minutes, then he would go sit back down. He progressed and played with his BFF Cohen everyday. Then he would play with is buddy from his class Carson. Cohen moved away and now Blake plays with everyone. I don't know if he doesn't want to play with just one person because he was just playing with Cohen and he moved so I don't know if that left an impact. He now goes up to kids who aren't playing with anyone and asks if they want to play with them. He switches constantly with kids and as we saw at his class party, he is good friends with all his classmates. They love Blake. It is fun to see him growing up. I will say it was interesting when he told me that he played with all the girls in his class (there are 5 girls in his class...the rest are boys). I asked if he was the only boy and he said..um, yeah!

Boys

A couple weeks ago Beckett came over to play at our house while his mom and dad went to the doctor to see if she was pregnant with a boy or a girl. They are having another boy. There are lots of boys in our lives.

They had fun playing together.

Aaron spent the beginning of the week in Atlanta for training. He is back with PwC.

Cowboy Park

Dylan's friend Lacie came over today to play. It was a little chilly in the morning, so after we ate some lunch the sun was out and warm enough to go to the park.


Aren't they cute?

Dylan was annoyed that Lacie put her hand on the same place that he wanted to put his on the slide.

Very annoyed....but it didn't bother Lacie at all.  

We went to Costco afterwards and then came home just in time for Lacie's mom to pick her up and Dylan and I to run to school to pick up Blake.

While we were walking home from school Blake was telling us about something that happened in school. Somehow his class and teacher were talking about how all the kids in his class don't like playing with their siblings. Blake then said that he liked playing with his brother because his brother was his best friend. He said that his teacher then said, "That makes my heart happy Blake." I liked hearing this story and wanted to write it down because there are times when they don't act like best friends and I want to remember this time. Yesterday Dylan and I were playing together while Blake was at school and he kept asking me if it was time to pick up Blake. So after the 10th time I asked him if he liked playing with Blake...he told me that he liked playing with Blake more then he liked playing with me. They really are good buddies.

Lately

The other day we went to the library for story time and crafts. When we came home he was still in an artsy mood.

Some other things that we have been up to lately:
-Aaron went to visit Trevor and Meesa and gang after he wrapped up work in Florida.
-Aaron got an offer and accepted a job in Dallas
-The boys went to their dentist cleaning. We found out that Blake's 6 year molars were coming in and one was already in. A week after the appointment he woke up during the night in a late of pain, but he still went to school the next day and was fine. Dylan did in fact break some of the bone on his tooth. We will wait to see if it causes him pain. If it does, then he has to get the tooth pulled, otherwise we will just wait for it to fall out.
-Dylan and I toured lots of preschools. We are going to change from where he currently attends and add another day.
-Dylan was screened by our school district for his speech. He has trouble with his Rs and his Ls, but they said it is all age appropriate so doesn't qualify for their speech program. His tongue is slightly larger so he moves it left to right a little bit slower then average, but nothing that concerns them. We have some exercises to work on to help him out. When things were too hard for him to say or do he would just say, "I don't know". But they also screened his academics. He is doing great in this. They say that he is a great problem solver and very analytical. They said that he doesn't need instructions, he can be given something and he will figure it out by himself, which according to them is pretty good for his age. One of the ladies just loved Dylan and said, "He is such a blessing." I told her that she probably says that to everyone...she said no, he is a really special kid and everyone loves him. She also said something that made me happy and sad...she said, "You can tell that there is a lot of love in your home." This made me happy for obvious reasons, but sad because it means that she sees a lot of kids who don't have love in their home.
-We've had lots of friends over to play and gone over to lots of friends' houses to keep us sane during the cold temps
-While we did have a lot of cold days, this past week was beautiful (like in the 70s). It was awesome. Everyone was so happy and full of energy. It might have been harder to get our homework done because we wanted to be outside more :)
-Got to Skype with our friends who moved to Minnesota.

Crazy Driver

Yesterday afternoon as we were walking home from school we saw our friends Beckett and Kelsey outside playing, so we stopped and played outside with them. Dylan hasn't been feeling awesome lately so he was taking a nap in the stroller while the rest played and Cambria and I talked about what preschool to put our kids in.

Blake loved this car that they got for Christmas. Apparently Beckett thought Blake was kind of a crazy driver. We came home and jumped on the tramp...it was great to have nice weather. While Blake was in school we jumped and rode scooters and played outside.

Nice Weather

Monday Blake didn't have school and Aaron didn't have work, so we took advantage of the nice weather. The previous week it was in the 20s-30s...it was cold. Saturday-Wednesday it was in the high 60s and sunny. It was such a nice change. So Monday we jumped on the tramp and Blake rode his bike. And Dylan was on his scooter.

More Birthday Parties

Last Friday night, Blake went to his classmate Rhett's birthday party. His birthday party was at his house with a Star Wars theme. His mom went all out, but I didn't get any pictures. Earlier in the week my friend watched Dylan so that I could go help out in Blake's class. It was fun to be there and to meet all his classmates. They are fun kids and he has such a great teacher. So at the birthday party I got to see almost all of them again...oh, and I talked with some of the parents too...I don't really know if that is exciting though. However we did learn that one of his classmates lives around the corner from us.

Saturday morning we drove to a trampoline place for Ryan's birthday party. Ryan went against the norm and got a TMNT cake. She isn't super girly.

Vivienne and Cooper are good friends with Blake. 

He loved playing with Luke and Musa. Musa and Blake have the same birthday.


They had fun. Monday I got an email from Rhett's mom saying that a kid from the party tested positive for the flu the next day and some of  the kids from the party got sick. The class had a handful of kids out sick on Tuesday, but thankfully Blake wasn't one of them.

Happy Birthday Aaron

Last week we celebrated Aaron's birthday. Before school, we opened presents and then Blake went off to school and Aaron went to work. For dinner we went to a restaurant and then came home for an ice cream birthday cake...it was tasty.

Aaron is wearing the shirt that Blake picked out for Aaron's present. He wanted one that matched his "handsome" shirt. Happy Birthday Aaron!